


Cut-and-Dried Sleeve

by lnhammer



Category: Chinese Mythology & Folklore - Fandom, Liáo zhāi zhì yì | Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio - Pú Sōnglíng
Genre: Chromatic Source, Chromatic Yuletide, Cliche Storm, Cut Sleeves, Don't Have to Know Canon, Dried Sleeves, F/F, F/M, Ghosts, Marriage of Convenience, Nothing Up My Sleeve, Repaired Sleeves, Significant Sleeves, Supposedly Loosely Translated from Chinese, chromatic characters, old flame, what's in a name?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 05:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13047243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lnhammer/pseuds/lnhammer
Summary: There was a gentleman living in Puyang named either Wei or Li or Cao. This man had two peculiarities. The first was that he always spoke in cliches. The second was that he was of the cut-sleeve persuasion.





	Cut-and-Dried Sleeve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quillori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/gifts).



This is a story from Puyang, Henan. Three different people told it to me at different times, agreeing in all particulars except on the name of the man involved. 

There was a gentleman living in Puyang named either Wei or Li or Cao. This man had two peculiarities. The first was that he always spoke in cliches. With him, he was never in good health, he was always “fit as a fiddle.” It never just rained, but “rained cats and dogs.” It was never merely a sunny day, but the sky was “dry as a bone” —as was his throat, when he had no wine before him.

The other peculiarity of Wei (or Li or Cao) was that he was of the cut-sleeve persuasion. For several years, he had one boyfriend after another, falling “head over heels” with a new lover every few months or returning to an old one. He was shockingly open about it all, never bothering to hide his proclivities or affairs but “wearing his heart on his sleeve.” His one saving grace in all this promiscuity was that he was always faithful to his current amour, breaking off one affair before beginning another.

After many years of life in this manner, Wei (if he wasn’t really Li or even Cao) did the unexpected: he stayed with one boyfriend for a long time. No one could see what about the youth, whose courtesan name was Red Butterfly, made him different from the others. When asked, the man (who I’ll just call Wei from now on) would always reply that he and Red Butterfly were “connected by a red thread.” Close friends shook their heads, but didn’t worry themselves too much about it—they knew he would return to his old ways eventually, for as Wei himself put it, “a leopard can’t change his spots.” (Though apparently he can his name.)

After nearly two years together, Red Butterfly died during an epidemic. Wei was “completely devastated” and declared for weeks that he was “dying of a broken heart” and would never love another boy again. 

Had this happened before he met Red Butterfly, his friends knew he would have soon enough found another boy to console him, after a short period of extravagant mourning. A few, notably some former boyfriends and procurers, asserted this was still the case, but others thought he might truly mourn for a long time. What actually happened “completely surprised” them all. 

After a little more than a month, Wei received a letter from his grandmother telling him in no uncertain terms to get married and beget an heir or she would see to it that his money was cut off. Since his way of life was completely dependent on his allowance and Matriarch Wei ruled the clan “with an iron hand,” this threat “shocked him to the core.”

That evening, while he was still reeling from this news, his landlady, a widow by the name of Zhang, came to him with a proposition. “If you really will never love a boy again, then why not turn to the other side?”

Wei stared at Widow Zhang. “What do you mean?”

“My daughter Qiliu, who will take over this place when I am gone, needs a husband. You will, at some point, need an heir to take proper care of your ancestral rites. I think both needs can be met at the same time.”

This struck Wei as an excellent proposal, but even in his panic, he was not so rash as to agree immediately. He insisted on interviewing Qiliu first, to “set the record straight.” Qiliu agreed, and a few minutes later she came to his lodgings and bowed deeply. 

Once they both were seated, Wei said, “I like everything to be cut and dried. Do you know anything of my disposition?”

Qiliu smiled, for how could she not? —he had been living in her mother’s lodgings for years, without concealing his boyfriends. “I do,” she said calmly.

Wei looked at her carefully. “You are not worried about it?”

“No,” she said, just as calmly, “because I also know that you are always faithful to your current partner. If you ever did sleep with someone else, you would be so ashamed, you would hide it from both me and the world, giving me no cause for shame.”

This struck Wei as refreshingly sensible. “With an attitude like that, I’m sure we can get along like two peas in a pod. Cut and dried, indeed.”

Qiliu calmly agreed, and on the very first auspicious day the soothsayer could find, the two were married. 

Wei’s friends were shocked and baffled, both by his change of spots and by his haste in changing. When one friend tried to hint that such speed was unseemly, Wei sagely replied, as if it were the wisdom of Confucius, “Strike while the poker is hot.” It was only later that this friend realized he could have replied, to great effect, “Haste makes waste.”

Wei and his bride quickly settled into their new lives, and sooner than anyone expected Qiliu was pregnant. Their life was quite comfortable. Between his family allowance, which Matriarch Wei had increased for his prompt obedience, and his no longer paying rent or supporting a boyfriend, the couple was well off. Qiliu allowed Wei, for his own expenses, slightly more than he could readily spend before their marriage, which made him feel like he was “rolling in cash.” He spent it on parties with good wine and exotic music, making him more popular than ever, even though the food was nothing great. He kept his word to his Qiliu and never even touched a flute boy—or dancing girl, for that matter—and if none of his friends actually heard his wife call him a “cut-and-dried sleeve,” her joking nickname was soon known around town. Regardless, Wei was quite happy. 

A few months into his marriage, just before Wei headed out for the evening, a surprising visitor came to call: an old lover, his boyfriend before Red Butterfly. “Dancing Moth!” Wei cried, “I heard you had died! —killed by bandits while traveling up north, or something like that."

Dancing Moth smiled but shook his head. “Rumors are strange. But speaking of strange rumors, what's this I hear about you,” and he chuckled as if he couldn't believe it, “marrying a woman?"

“Ah, but this one is true,” Wei said smugly. 

“You're … serious.” Whether Dancing Moth’s shock was real or assumed, I cannot say, but either way Wei took it for a joke. He had heard many jokes about himself, the past couple months. 

“I'm as pleased as punch, is what I am,” Wei replied.

“But how can you—?” and Dancing Moth waved his sleeve to take in the whole situation. 

“Needs can as needs must,” Wei said wisely, as if it was advice from Laozi. “But come, meet my wife.” Wei called Qiliu out to introduce his old friend, forgetting that as the daughter of his landlady, she already knew Dancing Moth from when Wei was seeing him. But she ignored this lapse and placidly greeted his “old friend.”

Dancing Moth was polite but cold to her, while she in turn was calm but cautious towards him. Wei noticed none of this, but invited Dancing Moth to along to tonight's party. “There will be dancers from the pavilions of Wuhan, or someplace south like that.”

Dancing Moth accepted, and the old friends talked as they walked through the streets. Wei greeted all his neighbors as they passed.

Dancing Moth shook his head. “It’s strange, seeing you act all respectable to the world.”

“Act?” Wei was surprised. “But I really do have an upright face.”

“But she’s just for show, right?” waving his sleeve behind them towards Wei’s house. 

“Qiliu truly is my wife, and soon mother of my child.”

Dancing Moth stopped short, but then swallowed his shock and laid his hand on Wei’s sleeve. “Is there nothing for me for old time's sake?” he whispered.

Wei looked wistful for a moment, then shook his head. “One affair at a time,” he said. “Just as I told you when I was seeing Red Butterfly. But come, here’s the wine shop—have a bottle with me for old time’s sake.”

Dancing Moth drew away from the bright lanterns and shook his head. Wei looked after him, baffled, as his old flame stalked away into the night—but before he could pursue the matter further, two friends hailed his arrival, so Wei let him go to enjoy the party of the moment. 

The next morning, he returned to discover Dancing Moth had moved into his old lodgings. Widow Zhang had been reluctant to rent them out, when he had inquired after them the night before, but when Qiliu commented, “What better way to keep an eye on him?” she had agreed. Wei was puzzled by the turn of events, not being able to hit upon an appropriate platitude to describe it, but as he lacked the standing to object to how Widow Zhang conducted her business dealings, he shrugged it off.

Shrugging off the temptation of rekindling a flame while tinder constantly hovered nearby was harder, but Wei was true to his word to Qiliu. Besides, she rarely let the two men see each other alone inside the house, making sure either herself or her mother was near. 

Wei himself didn’t seem to notice the chaperonage, and if Dancing Moth did, he was too clever to comment on it. Instead he began currying favor with Qiliu, keeping her company during the day, when chores didn’t press, and running errands for her at night, when she generally had to stay home. He almost never went to Wei’s parties, nor resumed his old line of work, that anyone could tell. Perhaps it was this combination that led to the odd rumor that Dancing Moth was having an affair with Wei’s wife as a kind of revenge. 

It is to Wei’s credit that he never once suspected Qiliu might be unfaithful until a so-called friend joked to him about it—and even then, the idea confused him until he saw it was the cliche situation of his wife home alone with another man. It is also to his credit that he didn’t run straight home and accuse her of infidelity—instead, because he didn’t understand things, he carefully observed her. 

It was only because of this, he realized that Qiliu was not well. 

Her early pregnancy had been fine, better even than her mother had expected, and Wei had therefore put worries over her condition out of his mind. But as the pregnancy advanced, Qiliu’s health declined, to the point that her mother was worried. When Wei asked Qiliu how she was doing, she tiredly replied that she just needed to rest more. 

Widow Zhang, on the other hand, said it was time to consult a priest or a physician. Wei knew that she would never suggest such an expense, even one so trifling, if she wasn’t truly worried—and so he threw all jealousy aside and himself into taking care of Qiliu.

Doctors first—Wei had great faith in doctors after one had cured a lingering ague several years ago. The first doctor said it was an imbalance in her four vital organs. The second, in her five basic channels. They and the next three all said they could cure her, but under their treatments, Qiliu only got weaker.

Priests were no better. The first prayed to the gods for mercy. The second exorcised demons without mercy. They and the next three all said they could cure her, but no intercession seemed to work. (Well, one of the three claimed that it was the baby within her was cursed and so causing Qiliu’s decline, with the result that Wei immediately dismissed him—he was unwilling to believe a child of his line could do such a thing.)

All who treated her feared for her life if she gave birth in her current state. Wei, Window Zhang, and Dancing Moth took turns nursing her, but she only grew weaker as her time of confinement approached.

One day, as Wei scoured the market for yet another medicine to try, he was stopped by a wandering Daoist. “You are afflicted,” the man said.

Wei looked at him with haunted eyes. “My wife,” he said.

“Ah, that explains it,” the man said. “There is a ghost near you, I can tell, but your own energies seem undisturbed. She must be the target.”

“They said before there’s a ghost,” Wei said, “but they couldn’t find even a trace of it.”

“I can help,” the Daoist said simply. “If I can’t, there is no need to pay me.”

Wei could not refuse such an offer, and with a wave of his sleeve led him to Widow Zhang’s. Outside the gate, the Daoist paused a moment, then nodded. “A ghost resides here.” Before entering, he took from his pack three bunches of dried herbs and burned them, producing a great stink. He set one above the gateway, a second over the rear portal, and the third, he carried inside.

Reassured by the stench, Wei followed him. Qiliu lay in her bed, attended by Widow Zhang and Dancing Moth. The moment the latter saw the Daoist, he screeched and jumped for the door, then paused there, wavering and howling.

The Daoist chanted, waving the burnt herbs, until Dancing Moth pointed at Wei. “She stole you! I was only taking back what’s mine!”

Dazed, Wei shook his head. “It’s over,” he whispered. “It was over a long time ago.”

With one last screech, Dancing Moth rushed from the house. When he passed through the front gate, he shrieked even louder and bolted away. Servants who saw him reported that smoke rose up from his body as he ran. He was never seen again.

The exorcism was too late, however. Qiliu began labor that evening, and the next morning she gave birth to a son—who she looked at once before slipping away. Wei was heartbroken, so much so he couldn’t even find a cliche to describe himself but only wept silent tears.

The funeral was well-attended, out of respect for Wei, but not lavish, at the suggestion of Widow Zhang. The Daoist was paid well, but left town before anyone else could consult him. Widow Zhang cleaned out Dancing Moth’s empty rooms and had them exorcised by three different priests before reopening them up for let. As for Wei, after observing all the proper rites for Qiliu, he returned to his hometown and his family's estate, saying he would raise his child to be “a chip off the old block” as a son of Wei (assuming, of course, he wasn't a Li or even a Cao).

*

The Chronicler of the Strange comments:

> What the heck? What the HECK?  
>  A chance-met traveler in a tavern  
>  Spinning yarns over our third bottle of wine,  
>  The wife of an old friend  
>  Chatting after a comfortable dinner,  
>  A provincial examinee returning home  
>  After barely squeaking through with a pass  
>  —How can they all agree in every detail  
>  Except the man’s name? What’s up with that?  
>  It only goes to show what  
>  The greatest sages understand:  
>  The strangest transformation of all  
>  Is how stories change when passed  
>  From mouth to ear, from ear to mouth.  
>  But now I’ve written down this story,  
>  Fixed it for all time with no changes to come.  
>  May Heaven and Earth witness  
>  What the Ten Thousand Creatures can do!

**Author's Note:**

> In translating this Tale, which is found in a single variant edition, rather than rendering the original cliches literally, which would have required dozens of explanatory footnotes, I used the closest English equivalents. In a few cases, this required rewriting passages to fit the altered idiom, an acceptable inaccuracy given Wei’s banality is much of the point. Despite the Chronicler’s outraged commentary, I trust that Pu Songling, with his fine sense of the ironic, would not mind these changes.


End file.
